


Narrow Escapes, Unexpected Arrivals

by Princess of Geeks (Princess)



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Anal Sex, Cuddling, Episode Related, First Time, M/M, Magical Healing Cock, Morning After, Oral Sex, mild PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-02
Updated: 2012-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-28 20:48:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/312046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princess/pseuds/Princess%20of%20Geeks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of Season 2, "In the Serpent's Lair," Daniel is have a little trouble adjusting to, well, being alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Narrow Escapes, Unexpected Arrivals

Jack is already drunk when Daniel gets to his house. It's an unsurprising, celebratory drunk, considering that the four of them just saved the planet and the Stargate program, in the process resurrecting the two casualties that Daniel (and, he assumed, the rest of the program's personnel) is most interested in Not Being Dead. Himself being one of the two.  


Jack, comfortable in his own living room, is surrounded by a couple dozen base personnel, including Sam Carter. Daniel is surprised to see that Teal'c is here too, released from the Mountain just for tonight. And here are Major Ferretti, all the rest of SG-2, and not a few of the new and quite punch-drunk specialists who'd been called back from the Alpha Site -- Daniel feels the title of Beta Site makes more sense for a lot of reasons, but hey. He isn't going to quibble. Not tonight. The specialists have to be almost as disoriented as he is. He heard the klaxon announcing their repatriations, repeatedly, while he was in the infirmary, an ugly sound that nonetheless was a good one, because it was calling the travelers home.

"Daniel!" Jack calls from across the living room, when Teal'c answers Jack's door and lets him in, lets him step out of the fast-gathering dusk. He's shaking Teal'c's hand when Jack interrupts more emphatically. "Doctor Jackson! Space Monkey!" Jack has rushed across the room, bounding up the stairs in one leap, and Jack hugs him -- again -- and Daniel is in that moment sure that he'll never live the nickname down. Ever again.

Well. It's better than being called Danny Boy. By contemptuous, out of tune Marines. Although that's mostly happening in his nightmares, anymore.

Don't think about nightmares. Instead, take the bottle of beer that Sam pushes into his hand, and turn from Jack to fall into Doctor Fraiser's welcome and friendly hug, and then get propelled, by Jack, down the stairs and across the room to where Jack resumes holding forth about Bra'tac, to the willing audience of SG-1 and assorted others whose names Daniel cannot bring to mind just yet. Jack is turning their horror story into theater. Good trick, that.

Across the room Daniel obediently goes, to stand by the fireplace. Where he'd stood the night these people dragged him back from Abydos. The night this all began again.

Daniel stands there, watching Jack's face, nursing his beer, putting in appropriate barely-verbal interjections to the story when called for by the rapt faces around Jack, until he feels his knees are about to lock, and he looks around for a haven.

He sits down on the sofa, still leaning forward, somehow compelled to continue to give Jack his attention. He finds himself catching his right hand from exploring the place where he should have a huge burn, a ring of charred bleeding flesh, instead of what he does have, which are the normal God-given curves of his left shoulder and upper arm. He transfers his bottle from hand to hand, repeatedly, to keep from touching himself obsessively. Jack and Lou Ferretti have now been pulled into reminiscing about the first mission, back when West was in charge and Daniel was their golden whipping boy, and now they are reminiscing about the Abydos people and even about Ska'ara. Ska'ara in better days. Daniel bites down on his back teeth. He doesn't want to hear this. His eyes rove about, away from the faces and voices. Jack certainly has a lot of medals. And the hall bathroom is just as he remembers it. Some shampoo he left here months ago is still under the sink.

He finds his spot again, and his half-drunk beer, and he glances around and is surprised to see that without fanfare, as the stories around the fireplace have gone on and on, the crowd has dwindled. Sam is gone, which is a little surprising, but she has probably taken it upon herself to chauffeur Teal'c back to the Mountain, to his quarters that are little better than a cell. Perhaps Teal'c has a curfew; perhaps Sam didn't want to stay very late at her CO's home. Daniel can't draw any conclusions. But a big group has bid Jack farewell and left, possibly together, and now there seems to be only, Daniel presumes, some kind of inner circle remaining. Only the people Jack knows very well, and for very long, have stayed. Most of these men (and it's a handful of men, except for Janet Fraiser), Daniel thinks, Jack himself recruited into the program. So Daniel is surprised to find himself still here, too, and he thinks maybe he should leave. At once. He fumbles around for a place to put his beer bottle, doesn't find one, and stands up.

Really, he's surprised he came at all, except as he was being released from the infirmary earlier in the evening, Doctor Warner had reminded him where everyone was gathering, and had frankly urged him to go, almost insisting, really.

"Your team will be there. It would be a good idea for you to join them. Especially now; tonight. I think you all need to be together, after something like this." Doctor Warner wasn't a psychiatrist, but Daniel had been susceptible to the appeal. Seen its logic. Wholly separate from the yearning he felt to _not be alone._ Not tonight. Not yet.

Jack's door closes behind three members of SG-2.

Or maybe Doctor Warner saw the look in his eyes, and concluded without recourse to logic, that Daniel shouldn't be alone -- now that he'd once again survived a fatal shooting, a bleeding out and a revival in a sarcophagus. Daniel shivers involuntarily, in the warmth of Jack's living room. He feels great. Physically, at least. Weirdly hearty. It could easily shade into panic. He shouldn't feel this healthy.

His emotional mind shies away from that statement, although his logical, recording mind seems to have no trouble reproducing Doctor Warner's presumed internal summary of Daniel's condition, or obligingly replaying his own memories of those awful moments on the _hatak._

He was shot, burned, his wounds mortal. And it was the look on Jack's face in that moment, that horrible moment when they said goodbye on Ska'ara's -- on Klorel's -- ship, that had pulled Daniel here tonight. More than Doctor Warner's urging. More than anything else, even the hug in the gateroom. Although one implied the other.

His honesty with himself burns.

Now Janet Fraiser is hugging Jack, and Lou is taking his turn at hugging her goodbye too, and patting her on the shoulder -- she looks so strange out of uniform, so petite and fragile in jeans and a blouse, with her hair all down, falling in caramel curls over her shoulders, her visual image here lacking the absolute authority she carries in the infirmary, and Lou is following her to the door, and Jack is following them.

There's music playing, Daniel realizes now that the loud conversations have all vanished -- something old, something kind of R&B. Daniel is suddenly alone, standing by the fireplace with one empty beer clutched pointlessly in his hand. He looks up. Jack is turning back and discovering him. Why is Daniel still here? Daniel doesn't really belong here. It's awkward, having stayed until the end. What was he thinking? He should have left with Sam Carter and Teal'c.

"I should go," Daniel says. "Too," and he bends to put his empty bottle on the crowded coffee table and feels for his keys. His coat must be around here somewhere; no, it was warm out when he left the Mountain. He has no coat. Gate travel really fucks with your head sometimes. Can't even remember what season it's supposed to be. Daniel might have said some of that out loud, because Jack is looking at him with his head cocked, as if he's trying to understand. Jack is just standing there, at the head of the stairs that lead up to the door, up from the sunken living room, and then Jack puts his hands in his jeans pockets and walks over to Daniel as Daniel stupidly pats all his own pockets and finally comes up with the keys to his Jeep.

Daniel clears his throat. Jack is very close now, his eyes dark and somehow filling Daniel's field of vision. The music has stopped playing, and the room seems strangely quiet. Daniel says, "I should go. I have a bunch of work to do tomorrow; rehiring some civilian contractors that were let go, pulling -- things -- out of mothball. It will be so, so ... strange, trying to revive a program that was dead, just, what? Two days ago? Three?"

He puts his hand to his forehead. It's all blurring for him, the timing of it all -- the attacks on Earth. Two of them. One in the mirror reality, one in this reality. The real reality? Jack the stranger, the grim general, and Jack his friend, who is here, right here, who insults him in the kindest way possible, calls him pet names and hugs him in front of a gate room full of brass and jarheads. Who is gripping his shoulder, and -- astonishing -- hugging him now, without hesitation, in front of an empty fireplace. Just the two of them, again, in Jack's own home.

Home.

Something Daniel doesn't have any more.

Ska'ara is dead and not dead. Jack shot Ska'ara dead. Daniel was there. Ska'ara's Klorel wanted to kill Daniel, wanted very much and tried very hard to kill Daniel, and Ska'ara is not dead any more, but Sha're is gone, and Klorel escaped the conflagration and there is no home now. No place for Daniel on Abydos, no home, no escape from this empty grief. Sha're. Ska'ara.

Jack's arms are tight around him. Jack smells of beer and fading antiperspirant and sweat and laughter and laundry soap and pizza. Jack was there, there on Abydos, in the smothering heat and biting cold of the desert. Jack smells of home. Jack knows about home. Jack was there.

"Hey," Jack says. "Hey," and Daniel comes to himself to find he is holding on tightly. Jack's arms are around him, and his arms are around Jack. He's hugging Jack, standing there in Jack's post-party living room. Embarrassed, but he can't be embarrassed, because Jack isn't. Jack is holding on tighter than Daniel is. Maybe Doctor Warner was right. Maybe it's right that he came.

Jack's hand was warm and damp on his face, as the stabbing burn spread from his shoulder through his neck, up to his head, as he lay on the cold floor of the corridor of that ship. Daniel was a dead man. Jack knew it, had agreed to leave Daniel there, like some horrible scene out of a Hemingway war novel, among the bodies of their enemies. Jack had acquiesced, had turned and run to rejoin the others. Daniel had listened to the echoes as Jack ran, and then had marked the metallic rush of the rings as they left him alone to die. But he remembered in time that he didn't have to die. The toes of Daniel's boots had shrieked against the polished floor as he'd dragged himself to the sarcophagus. He'd had to leave the M-5 behind. It didn't matter, though. Not really.

"Don't leave. You're in no shape to drive. Here," Jack is saying, and Daniel lifts his head from Jack's shoulder as Jack steers him to the hallway, steers him to the doorway of the little guest room that he knows, that he's slept in before, but somehow Daniel is balking, without meaning to or wanting to, leaning away, tightening his arm around Jack's waist, turning his face away from looking into that sterile little room, not able to look directly at that empty cold bed, and Jack is saying, "Aw, to hell with it."

And then they are down the long dark hall, which Daniel has paced so many times in his nightmares, and then the nightmares are all gone, because it's Jack's bed. Jack's scent is all around him, and the pillow wet with his own quiet stupid tears, but it doesn't matter, because Jack is there, Jack is warm and strong and close, and the warm safe dark closes around Daniel, and he sleeps.

^^^^

Jack snores.

It wakes Daniel up, the sawing, choking rhythm, awful to hear until he identifies what it is, about three in the morning, oh-three-hundred, he supposes he should say. He gives himself a chagrined, embarrassed once-over, naked warm legs, the rest of him warm too, stripped to his button-up and boxers. There's time to muzzily note that he's sprawled in tangled covers, in Jack's bed, and he heaves at Jack's side, shoves him, and Jack turns over, putting his back to Daniel. Jack doesn't snore offworld; not like this. Jack, on his side now, swallows and coughs, once, and then his breathing evens out and it's the most natural thing in the world for Daniel to put his arm over Jack's side, to bury his nose in Jack's nape and breathe him in, push his knee into the warm crook of Jack's bare knee, and let sleep take him down again.

^^^^

His face is in Jack's armpit, which actually smells wonderful, laundered cotton undershirt and clean sweat, and this makes Daniel smile, dreamlike and chagrined at himself, at how stupid this is, to crave so deeply this intensely animal thing, this burrowing into something, a touch and a smell and the rough, commanding sound of a voice that altogether has come to mean safety on a dozen worlds, and then Daniel's smile fades. He swims up into consciousness, and his eyes open on golden morning light. He tries not to stiffen, because one of Jack's strong, callused hands is running over his shoulder and down his back, along his ribs, and the other is cupping his head, holding it pushed close in to white cotton over firm muscle. Daniel doesn't want to ruin this, doesn't want this to stop. Doesn't want Jack to stop, and if he moves or flinches, Jack will think he doesn't like it; Jack will fear that he's registering objection and surprise. He breathes. He wonders what Jack has done with his glasses. Something obvious and safe, he thinks.

"Good morning," Daniel murmurs, and Jack's hand only stutters for a second, a second in which Daniel finds his own hand and arm partially wrapped around Jack, and tightens his grip, getting a good handful of T-shirt -- more reassurance for Jack, he hopes, and then Daniel adds, "Thank you."

"God, for what," Jack returns, a half-smile in his voice, but his hand goes back to petting Daniel. Daniel's shoulder. Which is, in fact, whole.

They are in bed. In Jack's bed. Twined like lovers. It makes Daniel grin. It shouldn't, but it does.

 _We can give each other this,_ Daniel realizes, on flood of longing. He feels buoyant, safe. Cut off from the future or the past. His body is waking up, and it's as happy to be here as his heart is. A tingle of arousal runs through him. _I can do this, and I will._

He doesn't quite understand how it can be clear to him that Jack wants him, physically. Sexually. But he knows it's true. He knows that Jack wishes ... things. Jack is holding him close, but Jack's only petting his shoulder. Nevertheless. Jack might pet, might touch, other parts of Daniel, with just a little encouragement.

Just for now, in comfort, in the promising glow of the yellow morning light, Daniel can have this. He wants. And he knows -- he _knows_ \-- that Jack wants it too.

He turns and lifts his head just barely, gently mouthing the soft skin he discovers under his lips with the changed angle, and Jack grunts in surprise and his hand clutches hard at Daniel's shoulder.

"For letting me stay," Daniel answers. "For letting me sleep in your bed. Sleep with you." And then he starts again, mouthing and kissing, allowing his tongue to get involved, and wonders if the euphemism has sunk in, and then Jack outright groans. Jack's hands find their motion again. Daniel smiles, changing the shape of his kisses on Jack's body. Jack's hands are warm and firm on his back, at his waist. Daniel gropes through bedclothes, through warmth, and closes his hand around Jack's very erect penis, gripping it through the trivial barrier of tight cotton boxers.

 _Probably plain gray,_ Daniel thinks, and he laughs silently.

"Daniel," Jack forces out, sounding aroused and worried, all at once. Daniel lifts his head to meet Jack's astonished eyes. "I didn't mean.... Honestly, I wasn't trying..."

Daniel's hand on Jack's dick seems to have made it hard for him to speak, which makes Daniel smile all over again. "I know. But clearly. You're all right with this." And Daniel, perhaps evilly, punctuates his short sentence with a squeeze of his fingers and a twist of his wrist that make Jack close those liquid-chocolate eyes and jut his chin to the ceiling.

"God, yes, ah," Jack says.

"I am too," Daniel says. "I'm all right with this. I want this," and he keeps stroking, and then he stretches up, getting his other elbow under him, so he can kiss Jack's open mouth. At first Jack seems surprised, groaning some more, and then he's kissing Daniel back, and his arm is tight around Daniel's middle and one of his hands has now found Daniel's dick, too, and they are moaning together, kissing, wetly and deeply, tasting, exploring, and Daniel has to move away a little, slow this down, or he's going to come, right here, too soon. Much too soon for everything he finds he wants.

Everything is a lot.

He gets a knee under himself, reluctantly dislodging Jack's hand from his groin, and runs his hands down Jack's chest, just feeling the stretch of muscle over bone, just allowing himself to touch. Jack's arms fall away, and then one side of his mouth curves up, maybe a little shyly, Daniel judges, and Jack reaches to punch his pillow up so that he can watch Daniel while still resting his head, not straining to bend his neck up. He leaves his arms up there, loosely bent on either side of his head. It's an image of acquiescence that sends another jolt up Daniel's spine.

Daniel strokes him everywhere he can easily reach, finding the almost-imperceptible nip of his waist, the dancing pulse where his ribcage meets flat stomach, the swell of the muscles in his arms. His plain white T-shirt is getting rumpled, pushed up, exposing a line of dark hair, and yes, his boxer briefs are gray, with a plain white band. Daniel's hair falls into his eyes, and he looks up, smiling into Jack's now-serious gaze. Jack reaches to smooth his hair and bury his fingers in it, and that stills Daniel -- the feel of those fingers against his skull. They are both breathing hard.

"Can I?" Daniel says, plucking at Jack's waistband, and Jack lifts his hips. As soon as Daniel's pulled them down and almost off, Jack finishes the job with his feet, and sits up to grab his shirt behind his back one-handed and strip it too. His tags swing free and catch the nearly-horizontal light. Daniel reaches, runs his hand down the warm chain, weighs the tags and their plastic silencers in his palm. He lets go so Jack can help him get undressed. Jack strips his two shirts over his head, and then Daniel's boxers are gone too, tossed aside over the edge of the mattress, and he's falling or Jack's pulling him or both, but it seems what they both want is the clash and meeting of warm skin, all that warm skin, shoulders to knees.

Daniel buries his face in Jack's neck, and Jack has his hands in Daniel's hair again, and they're both pushing and groaning. The friction of skin against skin, the tightly focused rush when Jack's erection rubs against his own -- it's intoxicating. Once again Daniel feels the building arousal, coiling fast, and lying here full length is going to make Daniel climax much sooner than he wants. It's hard to press himself up, away from Jack's warmth.

"Wait, wait," Daniel says, and he moves, clumsy in his haste, and leans on his elbow. Jack reaches, still watching Daniel's face, and rubs his fingers in the spot of moisture Daniel left on his thigh. Daniel flattens a hand on Jack's chest and bends to get his mouth around the head of Jack's cock. He doesn't want to come before he's gotten the chance to do this.

The sharp flavor makes him close his eyes. It's so alive. Heavenly. Such a long time, so long, since he could have this. Do this. And never with someone like Jack. God, he's a goner already.

 _I'm in love with Jack,_ the thought comes, as he tastes the welling head, taking it in, along the entire length of his tongue, and he lets it bump against the back of his mouth. He shapes his mouth around the thick length of it. It tastes so good, feels so good, so big. Yes, he loves Jack. He's known it for a long time. The words should surprise him, worry him, but instead they reverberate in a silent affirmation.

Jack is making low sounds of pleasure, sounding a little stunned, even now, and arching gently into Daniel's mouth, holding his head between his two hands. Then one of his hands starts to roam again, tracing Daniel's lips where they're molded to himself, cupping the side of Daniel's neck, then sliding up, fingertips separating around Daniel's ear. Jack's touch is electrifying. Daniel feels he must have goose bumps wherever Jack's fingers trail.

Daniel's moving steadily now, up and down on Jack's wet shaft, sucking when his lips come around the flare of the head, loving the way he can linger over molding the tip to the roof of his mouth, there, just there. His own erection is getting insistent -- he's been too busy blissing out on touching Jack to worry about himself, but he reaches down and closes one hand around it, gives it a couple of quick perfunctory pulls, like scratching an itch.

"God, Daniel," Jack groans, and his hands are holding Daniel's head harder now, and the skin of his flanks is hot as fire under Daniel's hands. He's leaking more and more, and Daniel still wants. Daniel's greedy.

He moves a hand just below his mouth, curls his fingers around Jack's shaft, and strokes, feather light. He sits up and licks his lips, hand still moving, and Jack watches him, groans, and squeezes Daniel's shoulders.

Daniel says, "I... Could you...?" He sees the picture of what he wants; and he can feel it already, a penetrating vision of something that hasn't happened yet, but which words to use to ask for it seem just out of reach. Now that he's shifted closer, up the bed, Jack reaches for his erection, and Daniel closes his eyes at the touch, then looks down to see Jack's fingers caressing his shaft, his balls. God. His skin feels too small.

Daniel goes on, "I don't know if it's something you do; I don't want to assume. But I don't want this to end without feeling you inside me."

Jack's eyes get wide and he surges up to sitting. He locks his arms around Daniel and kisses his neck, wetly, sloppily.

Daniel says, "I want you to fuck me. If you do that." Daniel closes his eyes -- all that skin, again -- and sandpapers his cheek against Jack's. He has a distant sensation of vertigo, like diving into a warm ocean. He feels he should be more alarmed, more guilty, perhaps, than he is.

 _I love Jack. I want this. I want to know I'm really alive again._

He has another flash, there and gone this time, stripped of its power to stab him with horror, of the look in Jack's eyes when Jack had to leave him on the _hatak_. He may never hear it in words, but he doesn't need to: Jack loves him too. Loves him and knows him and wants him.

"Yes," Jack is saying, and they are kissing again, kissing each other's mouths, diving in, sucking hard, with an urgency that is just as purely sexual as anything they've done so far. Tongues collide, and it's wet and messy and deep and Daniel can hardly breathe. He cups his hand around his own erection again, and Jack's hand follows him there.

Not yet, not yet -- that touch almost makes him shoot. Daniel pulls away with a groan and lies down on his stomach, fumbling for a pillow and bending his knee so that he doesn't bring himself off against the mattress.

Jack's rummaging in the bedside drawer -- Daniel hears him open it -- and then he feels Jack's mouth, trailing fire down his spine. He moans and clutches at the sheet.

"God, Daniel, you look.... This is so.... You're sure this is what you want."

"Yes, I'm sure." Daniel stretches a hand back, connects with Jack's knee, pets it, grips it.

"I never thought... Jesus."

Daniel smiles, eyes closed. Incoherent Jack. He shouldn't feel this happy, but God, does he. He's not going to waste it, either, or second-guess. He's going to enjoy it.

Jack's knees ease between his legs, and Jack's mouth is on his back again, tasting the curve of a buttock, and then Jack slides two slick fingers inside him, gently but unhesitatingly, and Daniel groans and pushes his ass up for more. He didn't really intend to move, to push; his body did it for him.

"Jack, Jack," he says, and maybe he's begging now, but he doesn't even have to. Jack is going to give him whatever he wants. Something else he knows without knowing how.

Three fingers now; long and stiff and all the way in, and Jack is watching, Daniel can feel it. Daniel quits paying attention to anything but his body's urgent enjoyment, and lets himself push up, onto Jack's hand, over and over, and moan and call Jack's name.

"God, God, Daniel," Jack says, and Daniel doesn't have more than a couple of seconds to feel the loss of those fingers inside him before Jack is pushing in with his cock.

Daniel groans again, lower and louder than any noise he's made yet, and Jack is above him, sliding in, pushing against him. Daniel spreads his legs wider and curses.

Jack's on him now, bending low to lay his stomach and chest against Daniel's back, and he's cursing too, moving inside Daniel, a thick stretching bliss, so hot, so good.

"Christ, it's so good," Jack says, echoing what Daniel's feeling, and he mouths Daniel's ear, kisses the side of his head. He stills for a second, and Daniel keeps pushing, slowly, repeatedly, not getting much movement against the weight of Jack lying on him, and it's so good, so hot. Then Daniel's heart melts finally and entirely, as Jack reaches up with both hands, elbows bent, and grabs for Daniel's hands, lacing their fingers together.

Daniel scrubs his face into the pillow to muffle his groans, and calls Jack's name again.

Jack gasps, "Gotta wait, gotta ... slow down, just a sec...."

Daniel's panting. He squeezes Jack's fingers, and Jack squeezes back. He knows that feeling; knows Jack must be gritting his teeth, clenching against imminent orgasm. Jack's hands, on his. It's too much. Too much. He knows, now, knows how big this is. For both of them. They breathe together, waiting for the wave to crest without breaking.

"Daniel," Jack says again, and slowly, perhaps reluctantly, disengages from Daniel's hands to put his palms flat and push up. "Oh, holy Christ," he says, in a choked voice, and once again Daniel knows he's looking. Watching. Daniel moves too, lifting his ass, getting his knees under him, and then Jack grips his hips and just gives it to him.

Nothing to know, nothing to feel, but the obliterating red ecstasy, feeling split wide open, so deep, so hard and good. Open to Jack. Going, going, gone.

And then the gorgeous sensations, which couldn't get any bigger, any more overwhelming, do. Jack has shifted his weight onto one arm, and he's gripping Daniel's heavy cock, squeezing, stroking, and Daniel comes with a shout, collapsing onto the mattress, sweaty and heavy and wrecked, and Jack, calling his name, follows him down.

They lie there, piled together, for a long time.

Jack finds one of Daniel's hands, again, and squeezes tight, and Daniel's world shrinks to the steady rhythmic warmth of Jack's breaths on the skin of his neck, and the warmth and tightness caused by Jack still inside him, and the feel of Jack's hand in his. Jack's weight presses against his spine. It's all he wants to know, forever.

He doesn't doze, but the floating hypnotic feeling is close to it.

Finally Jack stirs and carefully pulls out, and the encroaching emptiness makes Daniel clench and roll on to his back. Jack is sitting, his back to Daniel, fumbling gently with something in his lap, and Daniel understands that Jack has used a condom.

But before that thought can more than barely register, Jack is lying down beside him again, and Daniel's arm has wrapped around his neck and shoulders, and Jack pulls one of the blankets up over them as far as their hips.

Daniel's long contented sigh is echoed by Jack's.

Thoughts creep in, but untroubled, drifting like the dust in the shaft of sunlight from the bedroom window. Daniel's pleasantly warm. A whole lot of Jack's skin is pressed against him.

Will it be easy? To go on from here? No.

Whatever they find to say about it, will it make any kind of sense? Hell, no, as Jack would say.

Will Daniel know how to handle this thing they've done together, now, when they find Sha're? ( _When, when, when,_ his conscience insists.) Probably not. But Jack, he is sure, will help and not hinder -- always. Will understand Daniel as well as Daniel does. No matter what Daniel wants or needs, at the time. At whatever time.

Because that's what Jack does. Heroically, dependably, stoically. Well, maybe not so much with the stoically. Not after today. Daniel smiles.

"Thank you," Daniel says again, and turns his face to kiss Jack's forehead. His hair is still matted with sweat.

"You keep saying that," Jack says, and runs a careful firm hand down Daniel's chest.

"Because I mean it."

"Okay," Jack says. "Okay then." And Daniel lets himself slide into the sleep of the well-fucked and well-loved, and when he wakes up, it's lunch time, and Jack is still there in bed with him, sitting up, leaning back against the headboard, filling in a crossword. In pen.

And Daniel is home.

end


End file.
